CHAPTER XXVII
During the watches of the ensuing night, amid bellowings of wind in the chimneys, long-drawn complaint of the great cedar tree, rattle of sleet, and those half-heard whisperings and footsteps—as of inhabitants long since departed—which so often haunt an old house through the hours of dark, Dominic Iglesias' mind, for cause unknown, was busied with reminiscences of the firm of Barking Brothers & Barking, and the many years he had spent in its service. He had no wish to think of these things. They came unbidden, pushing themselves upon remembrance. All manner of details, of little histories and episodes connected both with the financial and human affairs of the famous banking-house, occurred to him. And from thoughts of all this, but transmogrified and perverted, when, towards dawn, the storm abating, he at length fell asleep, his dreams were not exempt. For through them caracoled, in grotesque and most irregular inter-relation, those august personages, the heads of the firm, along with his fellow-clerks, living and dead, that militant Protestant, good George Lovegrove, and the whole personnel of the establishment, down to caretaker, messenger-boys, porters and the like. Never surely had been such wild doings in that sedate and reputable place of business—doings in which gross absurdity and ingenious cruelty went hand in hand; while, by some queer freak of the imagination, poor Pascal Pelletier, of hectic and pathetic memory, appeared as leader of the revels, at which the Lady of the Windswept Dust, sad-eyed, inscrutable of countenance, her dragon-embroidered scarf drawn closely about her shoulders, looked on.
Dominic arose from his brief uneasy slumbers anxious and unrefreshed. The phantasmagoria of his dream had been so living, so vivid, that it was difficult to throw off the impression produced by it. Moreover, he was slightly ashamed to find that, the restraining power of the will removed, his mind was capable of creating scenes of so loose and heartless a character. He was displeased with himself, distressed by this outbreak of the undisciplined and unregenerate "natural man" in him. Later, coming into his sitting-room, he unfortunately found matters awaiting him by no means calculated to obliterate displeasing impressions or promote suavity and peace.
For the pile of letters and circulars lying beside his plate upon the breakfast-table was topped by a note directed in de Courcy Smyth's nervous and irritable hand. Dominic opened it with a curious sense of reluctance. Only last week he had lent the man ten pounds; and here was another demand, couched in terms, too, so bullying, so almost threatening, that Dominic's back stiffened considerably.
Smyth requested, or rather commanded, that fifty pounds should be delivered to him without delay. "It was conceivable that Mr. Iglesias had not that amount by him in notes. But, since he had really nothing to do, it would be a little occupation for him to go and procure them." Smyth insisted the money should be paid in a lump sum, adding that, his time being as valuable as Iglesias' was worthless, he could not reasonably be expected to waste it in perpetual letters respecting a subject so essentially uninteresting and distasteful to him as that of ways and means. Such correspondence annoyed him, and put him off his work; and, as it clearly was very much to Iglesias' interest that the play should be finished as soon as possible, it was advisable that he should accede to Smyth's present request without parley and pay up at once.
Reading this mandatory epistle, Dominic was gravely displeased and hurt. Poppy St. John had warned him against the insatiable and insolent greed of persons of this kidney. He had discounted her speech somewhat, supposing it infected with such prejudice as the recollection of private wrongs will breed even in generous natures. Now he began to fear her strictures had been just. The egoism of the unsuccessful is a moral disease, destructive of all sense of proportion. Those suffering from it must be reckoned as insane; not sick merely, but actually mad with self-love. Smyth, to gain his play a hearing, would beggar him—Iglesias—without scruple or regret. But Dominic had no intention of being beggared in this connection. Thrice-sacred charity is one story; the encouragement of the unlimited borrower, the fostering of so colossal a selfishness quite another. A point had been reached where to accede to Smyth's demands was culpable, a consenting, indeed, to wrongdoing. Here then was occasion for careful consideration. Iglesias gravely laid the offensive missive aside, and proceeded to eat his breakfast before opening the rest of his letters. In the intervals of the meal he glanced at the contents of the morning paper.
The war news was unimportant. A skirmish or two, leaving a few more women's lives maimed and hearts desolate. A lie or two of continental manufacture, tending to blacken the fair fame of the most humane and good-tempered army which, in all probability, ever took the field. A shriek or two from soft-handed sentimentalists at home, who—for reasons best known to themselves—are ardent patriots of every country save their own. Such items formed too permanent a part of the daily menu, during the year of grace 1900, to excite more than passing notice. At the bottom of the column a paragraph of a more unusual character attracted Iglesias' attention. It announced it had authority for stating that Alarmist rumours, current regarding the unstable financial position of a certain well-known and highly respected London bank, were grossly exaggerated. No doubt the losses suffered by the bank in question had been severe, owing to its extensive connection with land and mining property in South Africa, and the disorganisation of business in that country consequent upon the war. The said losses were, however, of a temporary character, and had by no means reached the disastrous proportions commonly reported. Granted time, and a reasonable amount of patience on the part of persons most nearly interested, the storm would be successfully weathered, and the bank would resume the leading position which it had so long and honourably enjoyed. No names were given, but Iglesias had small difficulty in supplying them. It appeared to him that Barking Brothers must be in considerable straits or they would never, surely, put forth disclaimers of this description. His mind went back upon the dreams which had left such disquieting impressions upon his mind. In the light of that newspaper paragraph they took on an almost prophetic character. Absently he turned over the rest of the pile of letters, selected one, the handwriting upon the envelope of which was at once well-known and perplexing to his memory, opened it, and turned to the signature to find that of no less a personage than Sir Abel Barking himself.
During the next quarter of an hour Dominic Iglesias lived hard in thought, in decision, in struggle with personal resentment bred by remembrance of scant courtesy and ingratitude meted out to him. He learned that Messrs. Barking Brothers & Barking's embarrassments did, in point of fact, skirt the edge of ruin. Their affairs were in apparently inextricable confusion, owing to Reginald Barking's reckless speculations, while, to add to the general confusion, that strenuous young man had broken down utterly from nervous verstrain, and was, at the present time, incapable of the slightest mental or physical exertion. Things were at a deadlock. "Under these terrible circumstances," Sir Abel Barking wrote, "I turn to you, my good friend, as a person intimately acquainted with the operation of our firm. Your experience may be of service to us in this crisis, and, in virtue of the many benefits you have received from us in the past, I unhesitatingly claim your assistance. In my own name and that of my partners, I offer to reinstate you in your former position, but with enlarged powers. It has always been my endeavour, as you are well aware, to reward merit and to treat those in our employment with generosity and consideration. You will be glad, I am sure, to embrace this opportunity of repaying, in some small measure, your debt towards me and mine." More followed to the same effect. Neither the taste of the writer nor his manner of expression was happy. Of this Dominic was quite sensible. Patronage, especially after his period of independence, was far from agreeable to him. Yet behind the verbiage, the platitudes and bombastic phrases, his ear detected a very human cry of fear and cry for help. Should he accede, doing his best to allay that fear and render that help?
He rose, still holding the wordy letter in his hand, and paced the room. Of his own ability to render effective help, were he allowed freedom of action, Iglesias entertained little doubt—always supposing that the situation did not prove even worse than he had present reason for supposing. It was not difficult to see how the trouble had come about. The senior partners, lulled into false security by lifelong prosperity, had grown supine and inert. Sooner, in their opinion, might the stars fall from heaven than the august house of Barking prove unsound of foundation or capable of collapse! To hint at this, even as a remote possibility, was little short of blasphemous. Their amiable nephew, meanwhile, had regarded them as a flock of silly fat geese eminently fitted for plucking. He let them complacently hiss and cackle, congratulate themselves upon their worldly wisdom and conspicuous modernity, while, all the time, silently, diligently, relentlessly plucking. Now, awakening suddenly to the fact of their nudity, they were in a terrible taking; scandalised, flustered, very sore, poor birds, and quite past recollecting that feathers grow again if the system is sound and the cuticle health. To Iglesias these purse-proud, self-righteous, middle-aged gentlemen presented a spectacle at once pathetic and humorous in their present sad plight. A calm head and clear judgment might do much to ameliorate their position, and a calm head and cool judgment he was confident of possessing. Only was he, after all, disposed to place these useful possessions at their service?
For in the last nine months Dominic Iglesias' habits and outlook had changed notably. The values were altered. It would be far harder to return to the monotonous routine of business life now—even though a fine revenge, a delicate heaping of coals of fire, accompanied that return—than it had been to part company with it last year. Loneliness, the emptiness induced by absence of definite employment, no longer oppressed him. Holy Church had cured all that, giving him a definite place, and definite purpose, beautiful duties of prayer and worship, the restrained, yet continuous, excitement of the pushing forward of soul and spirit upon the fair, strange, daily, hourly journey towards the far horizon and the friendship of Almighty God. His retirement had become very dear to him, since it afforded scope for the conscious prosecution of that journey. Dominic's state of mind, in short, was that of the lover who dreads any and every outside demand which may, even momentarily, distract his attention from the object of his love. Threadneedle Street, the glass and mahogany walled corridors, and the moral atmosphere of them—money-getting and of this world conspicuously worldly—were not these ironically antagonistic to the journey upon which he had set forth and the habit of mind necessary to the successful prosecution of it? There was Poppy St. John, too, and the closer relation of friendship into which he had just entered with her. This must not be neglected. And, thinking of her, he could not but think of that younger son of the great banking-house, Alaric Barking, and his dealings with her—enjoying her as long as it suited him to do so, leaving her as soon as his passion cooled and a more advantageous social connection presented itself. Towards the handsome young soldier Iglesias was, it must be owned, somewhat merciless. Why should he go to the rescue of this young libertine's family, and indirectly facilitate his marriage, and increase its promise of happiness, by helping to secure him an otherwise vanishing fortune? Let him pay the price of his illicit pleasures and become a pauper. Such a consummation Dominic admitted he, personally, could face with entire resignation.
And yet—yet—on closer examination were not these reasons against undertaking the work offered him based upon personal disinclination, personal animosity, rather than upon plain right and wrong, and, consequently, were they not insufficient to justify abstention and refusal? That earlier dream of his, on the night following his dismissal last year, came back to him, with its touching memories of the narrow town garden behind the old house in Holland Street, Kensington—the golden laburnum, the shallow stone basin beloved of sooty sparrows, poor, dear Pascal Pelletier and his Huntley & Palmer's biscuit-box infernal machine and very crude methods of adjusting the age-old quarrel between capital and labour. On that occasion the lonely little boy, though at risk of grave injury to himself, had not hesitated to save the ill-favoured chunk-faced grey cat—which bore in speech and appearance so queer a likeness to Sir Abel Barking—from the ugly fate awaiting it. He had gathered it tenderly in his arms, pitying and striving to heal it. Was the child, by instinct, finer, nobler, more self-forgetful, than the man in the full possession of reason, instructed in the divine science, fortified by the example and merits of the saints? That would, indeed, be a melancholy conclusion. And so it occurred to him, not merely as conceivable but as incontestable, that the road to the far horizon, instead of leading in the opposite direction to the city banking-house, for him, at this particular juncture, led directly into and through it; so that to refuse would be to stray from the straight path and risk the obscuring of the blessed light by a cowardly and selfish lust of the immediate comfort of it.
He would go and help those distracted plucked geese to grow new feathers. Only to do so meant time, labour, unremitting application, a wholesale sacrifice of leisure; so he must see Poppy St. John first.